To Good To Be True

All it takes is hard times to bring out the worst in people. Let someone end up facing foreclosure or lose their job and the conmen come out of the woodwork.  They offer get rich schemes, can’t fail ways to get a job, or help getting money that does not exist.

They want to offer you a job, let you know you have money in the bank in some other country, or that you have won that lottery you can’t remember entering. They can help you get government grants that don’t exist and start a business that is guarantied to make you rich. All this and all you have to do is give them all your personal information and send them money

If it looks to good to be true, it’s most likely to good to be true. You can’t get something for nothing in this world and when someone says you can watch out. These helpful people exist because there are gullible and desperate individuals out there who are out of work, can’t pay their bills, and don’t know where to turn for help. They make a living taking advantage of people. They are and always will be there, a pitfall on life’s road that we must try to avoid. 

For Sale

For sale slightly used body parts; gray and thinning hair, arthritic joints, and eyesight requiring corrective lenses.

That’s an ad that I won’t be posting anytime soon and if I did who would want parts from body whose warranty is running out. Yet in the current economic climate that’s what some people are doing. They’re selling everything from their blood and hair to sperm and eggs. If you want to buy it they have it for sale.

It’s illegal to sell your organs in the USA but you can sell plasma, hair, cord blood, sperm, eggs, or hire yourself out as a guinea pig and with a quick trip to the internet you can find sites that will tell you how to do it.

With money getting tight there are more and more people looking for things to sell and everyone has blood and hair (well almost everyone has hair). 

They Never Told Me.

Now that some TV stations have made the switch to digital, people who are not on cable or satellite are discovering what the Government never told them. Not everyone can get reception even if they bought a converter box or own a digital ready TV.

What no one told them is that it’s not the receiver it’s the antenna that makes the real difference. Sure you need to be able to view digital programming with your TV, but you also need to be able to receive that programming with your antenna and most people were never told their antenna would not do the job. It seems that there are to facts about the digital TV single that no one thought to mention. The single is UHF and it is an all or nothing proposition.

You need a UHF antenna and the single drops off to nothing at the edge of its range. In other words you need a new antenna and even with one there is no guarantee you will still be able to watch your local stations. The only people who really benefit from the switch are those with cable or satellite TV.

Analog to digital TV checklist

Make sure you'll have TV reception after stations cut analog broadcasts

   Associated Press March 2, 2009

• If you have digital converter boxes hooked up and you get some but not all the channels you expect, you should first force the box to re-scan the airwaves, since some channels may have moved to new frequencies. Some converter boxes don't scan well, so you may have to key in the channel number manually. Check the box's directions, and look at www.antennaweb.org to figure out which channels should be available in your area. Re-scan periodically until after June 12 to make sure you pick up stations that switch late.
  
  
• If rescanning doesn't help, the problem may be your antenna. Outdoor antennas properly pointed toward a TV tower are preferable, but indoor antennas work if you're reasonably close to the tower. Note that antennas should be capable of receiving both VHF and UHF signals — some older ones are VHF-only. Modern indoor antennas are available from $40 to $100.